66. Clarity
A Living Manifesto on Journalism for 2026 and Beyond
I had a weird year filled with professional highs, personal lows, and a whole lot of mundane adult days in between. Calm was not my friend this year. I intend to change that in 2026.
In this very weird year, I published Blazing Eye Sees All, my second book, and traveled from Washington DC to Hamilton, Montana, talking about it with crowds large and small (and somehow I was on C-SPAN twice). The act of yanking a book out of your brain, committing it to paper, writing and rewriting it, then having people eventually set a copy of that very book in front of you and asking you to sign it — it’s a wonderful, emotional thing. I hope to continue this process for the rest of my life.
Also in this very weird year, I committed the majority of my time to reporting and writing the podcast Hush: Love Thy Neighbor, about the death of Sarah Zuber. It was a difficult and all-consuming project, one beloved by listeners. And for my hard work, Oregon Public Broadcasting rewarded me by killing the show. Was I given an explanation for why Hush was cancelled? Nope.
But this is how things go in media. You do a good job, you do it for paltry pay, and then someone who makes a lot of money — more than you can ever imagine making — decides your time is done. Goodbye. You are a line on a spreadsheet and we have deleted that row.
I received this news in early December, and I did not bounce back as quickly as I would have hoped. I slept a lot afterward, to the point where I started to wonder if something was wrong and if my energy and passion for what I do had been officially snuffed out.
A couple of weeks ago, I started closing browser tabs I’d had open for months. If I hadn’t gotten to them yet, would I ever? Probably not. In the process of clearing off my computer, a document I started writing over the winter popped up: a manifesto.
Last year, I took a six-week writing class studying the art of the manifesto — a style of writing I’d only observed as a reporter, not a writer. When someone writes a manifesto, it’s a declaration of their intentions, and in my line of work that’s often a bad thing — a reason for violence and destruction.
But in this class, I learned how manifestos have historically been so much more than that: bold expressions of intent, beautiful commitments to lives well-lived, commentary on social change. To even write a manifesto is to take a risk, I realized. How many times do we, as people and as writers, unflinching state who we are and what we are all about? And then — god forbid — publish it! Think of all the judgement. Think of all the critique. Who would do such a thing?
In Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution, author Breanne Fahs offers this explanation of why manifestos hold such enduring power:
Full of contradictions, ironies, and clashes, manifestos operate on unsteady ground. The genre combines the romantic quality of dreamers and artists imagining something new and whimsical together with the crushing power of a Mack truck bulldozing over established traditions, trashing accepted modes of thought, and eradicating the past. Manifestos do the transformative work of hoping and destroying, reflecting and violently ending things. As [Julian] Hanna wrote, ‘Part of the attraction of the manifesto is that it remains a surprisingly complex and often paradoxical genre: flippant and sincere, prickly and smooth, logical and absurd, material and immaterial, shallow and profound.’ This complexity arises in part because manifestos have no reverence for the past, no homage to what has come before. They want only what is new, of the now, in the present tense, and they want it immediately.
In this process of rebuilding after loss, I started working on my manifesto again. And I think this is how I’d like to leave 2025 behind — to give you this declaration on journalism, and what media asks of the people who make it, and how we can find a new way forward within it. I can’t promise that I’ll always follow it, which is why I’ve added the word “living” in this title. I think a manifesto can always be changing and evolving. Maybe some of what I say here will seem obvious to you, or maybe you think I’m crazy. Hey, that’s what a manifesto is for.
To all of you who supported my journalism with your hard-earned dollars this year, thank you. To those of you who remain unpaid subscribers, I want to thank you as well. To those of you who remain on the fence on if you should contribute your money to my work, I hope the statements I make below push you in one way or another.
A Living Manifesto on Journalism in 2026 and Beyond
By Leah Sottile
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CONSIDERATIONS
1. Fifty-five million Americans — some 16 percent of the population — have no access to a local newspaper.1
2. Twelve percent of all news jobs are located in one single city.
3. Billionaires named Mark and Jeff and Tim and Elon decide what “newsworthy” means.
4. The adage that journalism should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” is abandoned when the comfortable are deciding who to afflict.
QUANDARIES
1. Journalism demands sacrifice. In order to document the world, give up anything that might suggest bias. Do not sign petitions. Do not put signs in your yard. Question the slogans on your bumper stickers, on your t-shirts.
2. Do you vote? Some journalists do not, fearful that a vote in one way or another means they have lost their ability to be neutral. Even if that vote is secret, even if only the conscience knows how you chose, is it still a smoke signal sent into the sky? Is it an indication you have strayed from the middle path?
3. Do you donate to causes you believe in? Should you believe in any cause? Does believing in something mean you’ve lost the ability to do your job? How much life are you willing to give up? How much of life is one’s job? How much of your participation in being a human being will you cede? Where is the line between truth and fact? Can that line be standardized? Should it?
DECLARATIONS
1. Journalism is in crisis. The subscribers are gone. The advertisers went away. The magazines have closed, the newspapers have withered. Those are dead bodies, buried and gone. Change is tantamount to survival, and change begins with allowing journalists to be humans. Bias is real. Perceived bias is also real. However, it is a farce to believe that the public does not see journalists as operating from points of view, from real and expressed biases.
2. Acknowledge that there is a difference between truth and facts.
3. Understand how societal norms have led to inequality. Report on who is excluded by those norms, and who stands to benefit.
4. Consider journalism a skilled trade. Electricians, plumbers, journalists. Journalism students should complete apprenticeships in the field and study under a mentor.
5. Shame toxic practices like “parachute journalism,” which has become normalized. This practice enables journalists from large cities to drop into communities where they have no knowledge of its people and politics. Every city and state and town has unemployed journalists. Pay them to write stories that do not inadvertently cause harm because of ignorance or a lack of cultural competence.
6. Journalism aims to avoid harm, but too often journalists are unaware of the ways their work creates harm. For example, protesters are maligned in front page stories as rioters. Police decry violence at a press conference, and yet their ranks fire rubber bullets into unarmed crowds. Violence is not a broken window. Violence is not hundreds or thousands of people shouting into the faces of law enforcement. Violence is the normalization of a state that demands control through force and fear. Harm comes when journalists help along that normalization.
7. If you find yourself getting close to power — politicians, police officers, business tycoons, the rich — and are consistently repeating their concerns in the journalism you create, hand in your press pass, then punch yourself.
8. Journalism punches up at power. Full stop. It never punches down at the people the powerful aim to control.
9. The saying “trust, but verify” is insufficient. The saying should be “earn trust, then verify.” There is a difference.
10. Trust is not earned quickly. People are entitled to privacy and dignity and the choice to share their story when they are ready. Until then everyone should have to wait. Be patient. Do not show up on the doorstep of those in grief. Just because this practice has been normalized doesn’t make it humane.
11. AI is for losers.
12. Reporting will harm you. You are not emotionless. Don’t work for people who tell you to toughen up. Cry on the job if you have to, and don’t do it in a bathroom stall. Let people see your humanity.
13. Before using the word “unprecedented,” interview a historian.
14. Get to know an archivist or a librarian.
15. A Nazi salute never needs to be verified. If you find yourself in a position where you are being told by an editor to verify if a Nazi salute is truly a Nazi salute, pull the fire alarm and stage a walkout with all of your coworkers. Act like the building is on fire. Do not return to work until management acknowledges that a Nazi salute is a Nazi salute. Handwringing and soft-pedaling hate is a call for an emergency.
16. Have the guts to tell management to fuck off. Always be willing to walk off the job. Put your principles first. Know the signs of gaslighting and think about what it would do to a society if your work aided in the gaslighting of an entire population of people. Think of the worst-case scenario.
17. Journalism is not just about politics and crime. It should aim to capture all of the human experience: the beauty, the sadness. The simple things, the complicated things. Resist myopia.
18. Remember that you were a journalism student once who wanted to tell stories so powerful, people would feel inspired to create change. Remember this is still possible, but it is only possible by remembering that you are human. Stand up for human rights and reflect those priorities in your work. Be willing to be fired from any institution that tells you not to. Bully the bulliers. Be petty and incredibly annoying with authority.
19. The people are your bosses. You write for the people. You are a person.
I was going to donate to OPB because I loved Hush so much, but because of the cancellation I became a paid subscriber instead. Thanks for being the kind of journalist who justifies my continued belief in journalism.
The 4 considerations are a doozy, like get a little dizzy re-reading doozy. UGH. Sorry and sad about Hush. Blazing Eye was top of my faves lists this year, so good and spurned a bunch of research on my end into the other movements that were touched on. Fascinating!!! Discovering your work this year was a major highlight, both in print and podcasts, please keep doing the good work, we all love it.